Forest Certification Under the Microscope

woodlotthumbnailNote:  A previous version of this story did not clarify that the research project described below is not yet complete and has not undergone peer review.  This version of the story includes this clarification.

Forest certification was created 20 years ago to accomplish a noble, but market-minded goal: foster environmental stewardship in the nation’s privately-owned forests while offering landowners an economic advantage when bringing their products to market.

It seemed like a good deal for all. Maine’s forest land would be sustained as a sound, renewable resource and landowners, mainly of big timber companies, would be allowed to label products with a green certification – a designation meant to appeal to a growing population of environmentally-conscious consumers.

But research supported in part by UMaine’s Sustainability Solutions Initiative (SSI) has uncovered data indicating a good portion of the state’s 8 million acres of certified forest land – located primarily in Northern Maine – is being overharvested. In other words, tree takeaway exceeds tree growth.

Although this study is not yet complete and has not undergone peer review, researchers say the findings raise questions about the long-term sustainability of timber harvest in Maine – and the ability of certification to effect change.

“Obviously, there is a disconnect here,” said Robert Seymour, Curtis Hutchins Professor of Forest Resources, who is heading up the project. “The key premise in certification is not harvesting more than you’re growing.”

Seymour’s team wants to know why the gap between sustainability standards and actual performance exists. In fact, they say, Maine is a great test tube for the certification concept as a whole. The state’s “green certified” area is the largest contiguous tract of undeveloped land east of the Mississippi, an area five times as big as Yellowstone National Park, unencumbered by highways or major towns. And almost all of it is privately held.

The research will hone in on whether the social and ecological science that underpins certification standards has been eroded or ignored as programs strive to be as inclusive as possible to landowners. A big part of the confusion: no universal standards exist for forest certification as they do for things like organic foods. Private lands are certified by third-party auditors at non-governmental agencies (NGOs), which set their own benchmarks and standards.

The research is part of SSI’s Emerging Opportunities – Foundations for Future Research grant program. Focused on broadening the scope of SSI and the Mitchell Center, these projects offer researchers a chance to engage new stakeholders in new places in new ways. The endeavor involves detailed interviews with landowners, foresters, policy-makers, NGOs and auditors as researchers analyze the certification process.

The project grew out of a large body of research undertaken by David Sherwood, Seymour’s partner on the project, an environmental journalist who is pursuing a Master of Science degree in Forest Resources. Looking at the U.S. Forest Service’s Forest Inventory & Analysis (FIA) field data from 1999 to 2012, Sherwood found that tree harvest exceeds tree growth on much of the land certified as sustainable across the northern tier of Maine. Though the ratio is only one component of many required by certifiers, it is fundamental to sustainable forest management and resonates with customers, and thus, important to investigate.

“Our goal here is a deeper understanding of why we got some of the results we did,” Sherwood said. “We are seeing discrepancies in practice between landowners, and between certification systems. One of the issues seems to be that there is no one standard for certification.”

Certification was born in 1992 as a market-based compromise between environmentalists and industry after the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit in 1992 with a general consensus to delegate the process to third-party auditors. Over time, NGOs and industry groups have developed competing certification systems, with different standards and varying levels of rigor. In Maine, there are three primary certification systems: The Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI), the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and the American Tree Farm System (ATFS).

Sherwood’s findings raise questions about how well the third-party system is working. Among his findings:

  • Big, valuable trees, which produce logs for the region’s sawmills are being harvested much more intensely than they are growing.
  • Sugar maple and red spruce, two of the region’s most valuable, and iconic native tree species, are being harvested at nearly 150% of their growth on land currently certified as sustainable.
  • Though all certified lands have a negative growth-to-harvest ratio, the certification systems operating in Maine show very different results and trajectories over time, suggesting possible disparities in standards, auditing and monitoring practices.

Hard and fast conclusions about the state of certification in Maine have yet to be formed, but Seymour and Sherwood’s emphasize the urgency of their endeavor.

Said Seymour: “No sustainability issue could be more important to Maine and its people than the continued economic and ecological productivity of its forests.”